April 21, 2007

Altogether elsewhere..

Campus shooting, Obama's ears, nappy-headed ho's, Reid's surrender, the Royal Navy playing ping-pong in Tehran; these are the foreground phantasmagoria. The plates are shifting for better or worse. Auden's The Fall Of Rome has a sense of these times:

The piers are pummelled by the waves;In a lonely field the rainLashes an abandoned train;Outlaws fill the mountain caves...Private rites of magic sendThe temple prostitutes to sleep;All the literati keepAn imaginary friend...Altogether elsewhere, vastHerds of reindeer move acrossMiles and miles of golden moss,Silently and very fast.